Freelance journalist and Independent political activist, open to offers in both capacities. Contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Accepts PayPal.

Saturday, 13 August 2016

Gros Income

It raises many questions that a 25-year-old can avoid a tax bill larger than the entire NHS deficit merely because his umpteenth great-grandfather was William the Conqueror's "fat huntsman", his gros venor.

For one thing, why does he have a French name? Whatever happened to the people whose land it was before the arrival of the gros venor?

His own caste genuinely cannot see this.

They refer to how "old" their families are, as if everyone else's ancestors had sprung from a rock or something whenever agitation had begun for reform of working conditions, or for the extension of the franchise.

Before that, they assume that no one else was there, still less that those others were descended from the people whom their own ancestors had violently dispossessed.

They are rather like Owen "Son of Dai" Smith. Or Hilary Armstrong and Neil Fleming.

Why didn't I call the Police? They are aware, and sympathetic.

But even the Met ended up having to accept that its job was to direct traffic for Tony Blair, not to investigate him for selling peerages as flagrantly as any Norman king had ever done.

The idea that a provincial, mostly rural Force was going to take on a Cabinet Minister and her pet staffer was, frankly, laughable.

As laughable as the idea that any such Force might enforce the Hunting Act.

Or as laughable as the idea that anyone might send a tax bill, larger than the entire NHS deficit, to a 25-year-old whose umpteenth great-grandfather was William the Conqueror's "fat huntsman", his gros venor.